Ron Jones poses for a portrait on the set of 'The Wave' at the Marsh in San Francisco, Calif. on Monday, Jan. 25, 2010. Jones wrote the musical based on an experiment in fascism he conducted at a Palo Alto high school in the mid-1960s.

Photo: Adam Lau, The Chronicle

Ron Jones poses for a portrait on the set of 'The Wave' at the...

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Hailey Scandrette, center, performs as Alene during The Marsh Teen Troupe's dress rehearsal of 'The Wave', on Monday, Jan. 25, 2010 in San Francisco, Calif. at the Marsh. Ron Jones wrote the musical based on an experiment in fascism he conducted at a Palo Alto high school in the mid-1960s.

Photo: Adam Lau, The Chronicle

Hailey Scandrette, center, performs as Alene during The Marsh Teen...

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Mark Kenward as Mr. Jones, right, and Homero Rosas, Hailey Scandrette, and Tenaya Nasser-Frederick, from left, perform during The Marsh Teen Troupe's dress rehearsal of 'The Wave', on Monday, Jan. 25, 2010 in San Francisco, Calif. at the Marsh. The real Mr. Jones himself, Ron Jones, wrote the musical based on an experiment in fascism he conducted at a Palo Alto high school in the mid-1960s.

Photo: Adam Lau, The Chronicle

Mark Kenward as Mr. Jones, right, and Homero Rosas, Hailey...

Image 4 of 4

Ron Jones, left, listens to music behind the curtain at a dress rehearsal of 'The Wave' at the Marsh in San Francisco, Calif. on Monday, Jan. 25, 2010. Jones wrote the musical based on an experiment in fascism he conducted at a Palo Alto high school in the mid-1960s.

For a minute there, charismatic high school teacher Ron Jones had everyone, including himself, convinced that he was a power lord leading what he called the Third Wave. It was only a classroom experiment that lasted five days. But it went maybe too far, with the salutes and bodyguards and all, and ended up costing Jones his job and his future as a high school teacher.

What he got in return - during the 43 years since the experiment - was a magazine article that became a TV drama that was novelized by another writer and became an international best-seller. A documentary, "Lesson Plan: The Story of the Third Wave," is entering the film festival circuit in April.

Both the Third Wave and Jones are known everywhere but in the United States and especially here in the Bay Area, where the experiment took place. This may change as a musical called "The Wave" has its world premiere tonight at the Marsh in the Mission District. Of the various theatrical adaptations, this is the only one written by Jones with input from the students who were part of the strange new world he created at Cubberley High School in Palo Alto.

"It's the first time the story is being told with some accuracy about what really happened," says Jones, 69, while grinding coffee beans in his house up the hill from the Haight.

"This is kind of like a ghost that keeps reappearing in my life. Occasionally it has reached out and grabbed me by the neck," says Jones, who would count this as one of those times. "I've been invited to do an exorcism in Germany. When has that happened to someone? I'm a San Francisco gym teacher."

The story starts in the spring of 1967, when Jones was a first-year history teacher and basketball coach. It was a time and a place open to the style of teaching that Jones wanted to pursue after coming out of Stanford University with a master's degree in education and international relations.

Simulation was a trend

Simulation was in vogue for introducing abstract ideas. One of the abstractions was fascism in World War II, and Jones decided to simulate it by turning his world history classroom into a one-day fascist state. It was a morning class of 25 or 26 sophomores, and Jones introduced discipline by having them practice marching into class in an orderly fashion and sitting at their desks with perfect posture and smiles.

Jones figured that was the end of it, but when he came in the second morning, they were all sitting with perfect posture again. They liked this game, and that is where the trouble began.

By the end of day two, participating students had developed a secret hallway salute, which caused enough campus curiosity that by day three there were 200 students or more, including kids who had heard about it at rival high schools Palo Alto and Gunn, jamming his classroom to be part of the Third Wave.

"Now it was not just a simulation," says Jones. "The Third Wave was becoming something bigger, and I was a victim of my own excitement. I loved the power of it and the adulation."

On the fourth day, Jones raised the stakes by telling his students that the Third Wave was part of a national movement. They were "the vanguard, the soldiers of the future" and they would hold a rally on day five to meet their national leader in a televised speech.

By then the Third Wave soldiers were in white shirts, and they crammed into a small auditorium. Jones turned the TV on to meet their new leader and it was nothing but white static. After a few confusing moments, a slide projector came on with images of Adolf Hitler indoctrinating his youth.

"I said, 'This is where we are going. We're no better and no worse than the Germans we've been studying,' " Jones says. "This is our future unless we understand the need for freedom."

Students were shocked

It was a hard lesson and a bit much for high schoolers. "Some are crying. Some are bursting out of the room," says Jones. "It had gone way too far. I was lucky I could bring it to an end."

That wasn't the only end he brought it to. Two years later, he was let go. Nobody said it was specifically because of the Third Wave experiment, but nobody said it wasn't, either.

He never went back to the '50s-style flattop campus on Middlefield Road, which closed in 1979, and he failed to find another high school that would hire him.

Jones became a punk rocker and has written 30 books, but he couldn't face his own story until one of his students, Philip Neel, a Los Angeles film editor, decided to make a documentary. Neel tracked down a dozen of his Third Wave classmates, plus their parents, the school principal and Jones.

"If this happened today, there would be lawsuits galore," says Neel, who also interviewed psychologist Philip Zimbardo, creator of the famed Stanford prison cell experiment.

Coincidentally, the German feature "Die Welle," based on the experiment, premiered at Sundance two years ago. As part of the screening, Jones and his students were invited to answer questions.

"All of a sudden, we realized the story had international implications," says Jones, who came home from Sundance and approached the Marsh, where he has done three solo shows. He applied for a $40,000 grant to fund the musical; when he didn't get it, he formed his own partnership with the Marsh, Mercy High School for girls in San Francisco and some of his punk friends. Then he reached out to the original Third Wave class, some of whom are still traumatized by it.

'Monsters within us'

"For the first time in 40 years, I'm now engaged in conversation with my old students," he says. "Once I had the underpinning of what really happened to all those kids, I could write the play through their eyes. It's like a secret that we have. We know there are monsters within us."

The performers in "The Wave" are from the Marsh Youth Theater's Teen Troupe. Jones is at every rehearsal, making sure they do it right, but not too right. He won't let them use the original salute, so they've made up one of their own. Being at rehearsal reminds him of what he lost besides his teaching career.

"What I love more than anything is being around high school kids," he says. "They're so hopeful."